


Foregone Conclusions

by hitlikehammers



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Five Times, Fluff, Gen, Law School, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Outside Perspectives, Realization, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-20
Updated: 2012-06-20
Packaged: 2017-11-08 04:56:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times someone realized that Harvey Specter was serious about that Mike Ross kid. As in, absolutely serious. <b>Spoilers for 2.01 - She Knows.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Foregone Conclusions

**Author's Note:**

> In light of the fact that the vending machine at work restocked my favorite Blood Orange San Pellegrino (which made me oh-so-happy), have a wildly-fluffy, somewhat-belated celebratory _Suits_ fic ~~before tomorrow's episode happens and screws this over canonically even more than it already is~~.

In the end, they’re the ones who set up shop elsewhere.

The logistics of it are a nightmare, but they’re efficient people. And motivated. And they make it happen within a month of his announced return to the firm. They take less than half of the former Pearson Hardman: not everyone wants to relocate, to start over new.

But it’s Harvey Specter, and his willingness to pack up and head ever-eastward up the coast: that’s how Daniel Hardman figures it out.

Because that bastard, Daniel remembers, fought tooth and nail for his beloved fucking penthouse, and had vowed over sashimi at Sugiyama—not that Daniel himself had been there, of course, but he’d overheard it from the associates, who’d overheard it from the newly-named Junior Partner himself, before Daniel stepped in and told the cretins to get their expendable asses back to work—that he’d willingly jump from his oversized windows before he so much as considered giving that place up.

As it happens: the place was on the market for all of thirty minutes before someone had snatched it up.

So really: protecting his own? That’s not the Harvey Specter that Daniel knows and hates with every fibre of his being. Because that Harvey Specter didn’t have anything worth protecting. Harvey Specter had his ego, and he only ever looked out for number one, and Daniel, well—he’d always felt they shared a grudging sort of kinship, in that regard, way back when: a kinship that Daniel suspected factored strongly into why he couldn’t stand the fucker.

But _this_ Harvey Specter; this Harvey Specter wasn’t lying, there wasn’t the same degree of manipulation, of careful, conniving collusion behind his eyes when he said those words, _to protect my own_ , as there was when he spewed the rest of his self-assured bullshit. 

Those words had been real. 

And Daniel, yeah, he’s been fucking with his former colleagues, he’s not a wholly changed man, but he wasn’t lying when he said he reconnected with his wife. He’s familiar enough, now, with feeling—with the depth of it that accompanies something real where it’s burrowed down deep, and that’s what he sees in Harvey at those words, _in_ those words.

That’s how he knows that this Harvey Specter is something new, entirely.  
__________________________

Jessica figures it out when Harvey threatens to leave, threatens to give up everything he’s shaped his life around, for a post-pubescent man-child who wears those abhorrent skinny ties.

Though to be honest, she’d kind of figured there was something going on before this point. Long before.

Because there are things about Harvey Specter that Jessica knows; that _only_ Jessica knows. Things that require time and familiarity, that are shared out of trust and necessity, that came with the package when Jessica took a shine to him and plucked him out of the mail room and up to the adult table. Truths about the man behind the suit, behind the carefully-crafted facade even if it’s not all pretense—because Harvey really is kind of a bastard sometimes, in certain ways, and he’s certainly not a closet philanthropist, not some secret saint—but Jessica knows that, knows _him_ , unlike the others. 

And the part of it all that blindsides her, that catches her off-guard—and Jessica, she makes a point to only very, _very_ rarely find herself caught off-guard; what Jessica doesn’t expect is for Mike to know those same secrets, those things that _she_ knows. To know about how Harvey had taken to singing “So Much in Love” out the window of a limousine right before he threw up all the champagne he’d chugged on the last night before commencement, spraying half of Mass Ave with his vomit as he finished the last verse. Or for him to know about Harvey’s three living siblings, and to know where the fourth was buried. To know that Harvey went to SUNY for undergrad, as opposed to the private pedigrees of most of his peers. To know that his favorite gum was always cinnamon, and his favorite coffee, for all that he enjoyed the fancy trimmings for the sake of appearances, always came from Dunkin’ Donuts. 

At first, she blames it on Mike’s brilliant mind, his impressive memory. Then, she justifies it further by the fact that Harvey seems to genuinely tolerate Mike’s company without much effort, and therefore indulges it more than he would with most people. She shrugs off the feeling that it’s more than that, subtle; that what took her more than a decade has taken Mike less than a year—that the shell she’d cracked over time, with favors and financing and a deliberately measured pattern of give-and-take, Mike simply grinned at, and charmed into opening of its own accord.

Jessica breaks her own rules, chooses ignorance over truths, and she pays for it, in the end: standing there, threatening her friend and colleague but ultimately her _employee_ with only half-empty ultimatums, waiting for him to back down, to chose _her_ , like he always does.

But when Harvey vows to follow Mike out, despite everything, Jessica knows for sure. Because there’s a certain way that his chest rises and falls, a bit deeper; a glint in his eye that’s just a little bit new.

It’s more than just friendship, more than just loyalty.

It’s more than _just_ anything, she realizes, when she understands that Harvey—in that moment as he tells her that he’ll walk—means every goddamned word he says.

__________________________

Harvey figures it out at the very same time, a few moments before: he knows it when he throws his lot in with Mike, and it’s not just his expression, his eyes that don’t waver: he knows it in the way that his pulse stays steady.

More than that, though: he knows it in the way that he honestly, for all of the countless ways he can think of to respond to a gun to his head: he absolutely _cannot_ remember what it was like to do this job, to be this person, to live this life without Mike along for the ride. Which is moronic, and not true, because he _remembers_ , but it’s as if his brain doesn’t give a fuck, as if his limbs don’t care that they’re absolutely sure of the same motions he makes with or without Mike by his side. It doesn’t matter, none of it, because the whole of him has gone on strike, has stood up and said screw it, no.

Not without Mike.

And that’s fucking terrifying, like the first time he jumped out of a plane and his chute wouldn’t pull, not at first.

And it’s fucking gorgeous, when he licks his lips and tastes a little bit of Mike on his tongue still, phantom but real enough, for him, for this—stolen in the file room with his palm on Mike’s chest, calming, grounding; loving the wild throb of Mike’s heart in his hand—and so he smirks, and rides it, because this wave won’t last, he knows that, but he’s made his choice, and so what if it’s not the one he ever thought he’d be making, so what if it’s something he never guessed he could want.

Harvey realizes, just then, that it’s _Mike_ , across the board. No exceptions.

It’s as simple as that.

__________________________

Donna doesn’t so much figure it out, as simply confirm existing suspicions. Because she is Donna. 

And she knows everything.

But she sees the way Harvey looks at Mike that morning, the morning after: after Mike wows Jessica (of course he did, whether or not she wants to admit it), after Harvey realizes what they’re up against and starts planning an offensive even as he drafts contingencies, because while this isn’t a war he quite expects to win, he’ll be damned if he outright loses, in the end; after Mike comes in, exhausted, bags under his eyes but resolute, more composed than before: that morning, Jessica sees Harvey, who should look grim, or at least blank—has always looked that way before in circumstances of similar, if not quite so drastic, importance—but _that_ morning, when Harvey sees Mike, he smiles.

And he smiles the _real_ smile, the one that shows his teeth a little and crinkles at the corners of his eyes and makes him look younger and softer and like he could be touched by something worthwhile; Harvey smiles _that_ smile when Mike walks in and closes the door and puts his hands on the Patrick Ewing basketball—and even _she’s_ not allowed to touch that without repercussions—spinning it idly as he looks up, pale but attentive. Mike glances at Harvey through his lashes as his pulse thrums at the neck, visible even to Donna through the glass walls, and he’s nervous, just the side of shaking, but he’s okay. He’s okay, and Harvey’s smiling, and there’s a correlation there, obviously, but Donna can’t read which way it goes, which causes which, and she’s not sure it matters in the slightest.

And Donna always _knew_ , but now, she realizes, there’s absolutely no _question_.

__________________________

 

Mike, well; it’s not entirely clear when Mike figures it out, but if there were any lingering doubts, they’re cleared up pretty definitively one morning—the last morning—just in front of Austin Hall.

“And thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and shalt shew them the way wherein,” Mike draws the word out as he follows the carving around the curve of the stone, his gown trailing after him as he cranes his neck awkwardly, his gaze tilted to the perpendicular of normal and, yeah. That’s just about right. 

“They must walk,” Mike finishes, a little bit triumphantly as he plants his feet in the grass amidst the flowering trees, his hair dappled with the stray magnolia petals caught in the breeze. He looks ridiculous, all done up in full regalia, black and red and purple splayed against the white and green; “and the work that they must do.”

Mike grins, wide and bright and the sun is full, luminous but not searing by the end of a mild New England spring, but fuck; fuck if the sun’s got anything on that _smile_.

And yeah, Harvey’s staring, he knows he is, and it’s both endearing and a little bit heart-wrenching when Mike notices the look being leveled at him, when he stops still and the light in him dims; his expression quirks. He’s not frowning, but he’s curious, and it’s endearing because it’s Mike, but it squeezes tight in Harvey’s chest because it’s _Mike_ , and it’s not just curiosity but instead, there’s also doubt: an uncertainty that Mike still has in certain moments, in passing, that isn’t warranted, that doesn’t belong _here_.

“What?” Mike asks, skeptical when Harvey doesn’t break the gaze, and while Harvey won’t deny the fact that he’s thinking things—feeling things, even—he’s not the sort of man to say it; they’re not the men to put it out there on a walkway where God and everyone might hear them. 

He’s not that sort of man; not yet.

“Exodus?” That’s the sort of thing a man like Harvey says, asks, with his tone incredulous and his brow furrowed, judging, even as he steps closer and grabs for the portfolio in Mike’s hand, slings his other arm around Mike’s shoulders and maybe, maybe lets his fingers play in the fringe by Mike’s right ear. “Seriously?”

“You’re the one who decided to keep hiring from the douche pool after setting up the new digs,” Mike shoots back, cocks his head toward the hallowed halls of HLS as he raises an eyebrow at Harvey: a challenge, but he leans into Harvey’s body and Harvey lets their frames give into one another, lets their outlines mesh in the interim.

“That was Jessica’s call.” Harvey smirks a little before he puts on a leer. “You know I prefer drug-dealing expellees who think they’re Good Will Hunting.”

“Lame reference,” Mike calls him out. “But fitting, given the locale. I’ll let it slide.”

Harvey smirks, and Mike does the daring thing, the thing he still doesn’t opt for all that often, hasn’t grown into just yet: he leans in and take Harvey unawares, fits his lips to Harvey’s mouth and Harvey relishes it, the color and shape of him. Harvey savors the sweetness at of the backs of Mike’s teeth as he takes the kiss deeper, as he slides a hand around to cup the back of Mike’s neck , to cradle the curve of his skull and draw him in for an instant that stretches, a second that holds and gives them both what they want for the moment, just enough for now before they break apart.

“So, what’s the verdict?” Mike asks, a little bit breathless, and Harvey feels the catch in Mike’s voice at the center of his own chest; bites his own lower lip against the tightness that clenches, pleasant and painful and full. “Think I’ll make partner at the oh-so-prestigious Pearson Specter?” 

Mike’s gaze is laughing, his expression serious, and Harvey knows it’s both a tease and a question—it’s banter and curiosity and a bid for validation, and for the first time, Harvey wants to give it, all of it, and infinitely more. 

“We’ll see,” Harvey says, not so much skeptical or playful as he is a little bit wistful—almost hopeful. He thinks about all the incarnations of that word, dwells on all the myriad the things it can signify as he draws Mike close and steals another kiss, quick this time as he fingers the velvet box in his pocket and leads them on along the winding pavement for a moment before he reaches, tugs, and flips Mike’s hood up over his head; takes off running toward the canopy of trees in front of Langdell.

He doesn’t bother to wait, to look and see if Mike’s coming after him, because Harvey doesn’t waste his time on foregone conclusions. Harvey knows that when Mike catches him, the doubts will get left in the ether, and the realizations will either come or stay, whatever; but when they touch and find and ask and answer—when they come together and collide—Harvey is sure that it’ll be a time for knowing, instead of realizing; Harvey knows it will be something new.

He _knows_.

And of course: Mike’s on his heels, tripping against the hems of his robe, long before Harvey can so much as clear Dworkin.


End file.
